


Repudiation

by norah



Series: Breaking Faith [2]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Darkfic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-13
Updated: 2006-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 04:41:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norah/pseuds/norah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I told you you had a destiny," he says, forceful but calm. "This was … preordained. It's God's will, Starbuck. I have always known this would happen."</p><p>"You didn't tell <i>me</i>, though, did you?" She struggles. "Frak your God, and frak his will. This was <i>you</i>."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repudiation

**Author's Note:**

> Millions of thanks are due to my most excellent betas, , , and . As usual, without them I would be less than nothing, an insignificant scribbler unworthy of a reader's regard. Warnings for miscarriage, violence, attempted suicide, character death.

Kara stares at the wall while Leoben binds her ribs.

His hands are gentle, strangely reverent, a far sight from the crushing metal hands of the old-style toaster who'd given her the injuries in the first place. "Where did you think you were running, Starbuck?" He sounds almost amused, and her hands clench into fists. "Those resistance fighters you were staying with are long gone, and there are no ships around here. You must have known we'd find you."

She doesn't say anything. She feels the absence of her dog tags, a not-weight against her collarbone, and closes her eyes. _Artemis, Aphrodite, take care of his soul._ The same prayer she'd once said for Leoben, now sent up for Anders. Her ribs ache under the dressing and she shivers under Leoben's fingers. The gods, as always, are silent.

She'd figured it was hopeless to run, but she had to try once, for her own self-respect. Turns out the area is teeming with Cylons, mostly the old Centurions, but she'd seen some of the blonde woman and a mousy-looking male one too before her luck ran out. Two of the Centurions caught her and brought her back in more or less one piece, right to where she'd started, and handed her over to Leoben's evangelical mercies.

Now she _knows_ it's no use, so she spends the next month or two waiting. She waits and her ribs heal and she waits some more, though she's not sure what for. It's just that this cabin in the woods and this freakish Cylon prophet can't be everything, forever, right? At least she hopes not. So she waits.

And maybe she fraks Leoben again a couple of times.

Not that she means to; he's just _there_, all the time, with that irritating little smirk on his face, the one that says she just can't understand the power or infinite wisdom or whatever of his god. She hates that, wants to hit him until he can't smile anymore.

So she picks fights. Or maybe he picks them, because he has to know how much she hates all that preachy bullshit about rivers and streams and the infinite madness that is God's love. He gets on these kicks where he won't shut up about it, and even though she tries to ignore him, after a while it's like every vicious thing inside her comes to the surface. She sneers and baits and tells him he's just a frakking machine, a thing, a soulless piece of man-made tech, a poor imitation. It always ends the same way.

He lets her do it, lets her split his lip, make him bleed. She knows how strong he is and there's no way he's not _letting_ her do it.

That doesn't mean it doesn't get her wet when she shoves him down and renews his bruises, gives him new scrapes and cuts with her fists and nails and teeth. And maybe she's not the only screwed-up one around here, because he's always hard by the time she tears at his clothes and fighting turns to angry, vicious frakking on the floor. She rides him like a punishment; he takes it like a benediction, head tipped back in ecstasy.

He doesn't say her name again.

He doesn't say anything at all, just loses himself in her, shaking and panting, gasping wordlessly as he thrusts, all animal urgency and need. She doesn't lose herself, not like that. She's already lost, furious and alone and just so gods-damned tired of this endless waiting. She keeps her eyes open, sees his lips pull back over his teeth as he moves, and doesn't think about anyone else when she comes. It's always good, always _too_ good, and it always sets him off, too. She watches him break and shudder underneath her, and it never feels like winning. When she rolls off him, sickened and sated, she swears _never again_.

Until the next time.

*~*~*

She's heading for the bathroom with a sour taste in her mouth, knowing she's going to heave and cursing her gods-damned luck – sure, all of humanity may have been wiped out on this planet, but the gods-damned viruses are still going strong – when Leoben comes in the door.

"What the frak did you put in last night's dinner?" she asks him, saliva flooding her tongue and making her lisp. "I've been queasy all frakking day."

And instead of concern she sees guilt in his eyes, and his body stiffens as she passes him. She barely makes it to the toilet before she's puking her guts up.

Guilt is a new look on him, and even as she leans her cheek on the cool porcelain, panting, her thoughts are churning, rushing toward unwelcome conclusions. She gets a drink of water from the sink and fingers that new scar, the one low on her hip, and wonders if they took out more than a bullet in that frakking farm and she never knew it. Just the thought makes her go hot, and then cold again, and she throws up one more time, because _gods_, let her be wrong.

When she comes out of the bathroom wiping her mouth, he's there in the kitchen, carefully not meeting her eyes, and she knows she isn't.

He lets her shove him up against the counter – he always lets her -- and he keeps his face turned away when she starts hitting him. She's screaming, "What did you let them do with my implant? How could you do this to me?" and it's not until she hears the first crack of bone that she realizes she's got his fingers splayed against the counter's edge and she's leaning on them, hard.

She watches herself break the second finger, methodically, in the same place as the first, hears herself say, "I prayed for your soul, you sick frak," hears the crack as she breaks the next finger in the exact. Same. Place.

He looks back at her, and there's pain there - he's gritting his teeth and sweating. But pity and disappointment, too. She remembers him looking at her exactly like that on Galactica, saying, "I knew this about you. You're everything I thought you would be." And she drops his hand and runs, feeling sick for an entirely different reason.

*~*~*

Leoben catches her this time. He must have been right behind her all the way, but it's not until she's run as far as she can, cramping and gasping and heaving bile on the ground, that he grabs her wrists and shoves her up against a tree. He's not even breathing hard, and if the pain from his broken fingers is bothering him, he's not letting it show. She spits at his face, but her mouth is too dry; it's just noise.

"I told you you had a destiny," he says, forceful but calm. "This was … preordained. It's God's will, Starbuck. I have always known this would happen."

"You didn't tell _me_, though, did you?" She struggles. "Frak your God, and frak his will. This was _you_."

His grip tightens, but there's no anger in his eyes. "When will you learn that there is no difference? I am God's instrument, Starbuck. As are you."

"I'm nobody's frakking _instrument_, you frakking toaster. Get your hands off me." She's horrified to feel angry tears well up, and blinks them back as she tries once more to wrench away from him.

He's looking at her with that gods-damned _compassion_ again, and he says, "I'm sorry," just before she feels a heavy impact on her head and the world goes dark.

She wakes up back at the cabin. She's starting to think she's caught in an endless loop of running and injuries, anchored by these same four walls. She's not sure what's injured this time – her sense of self, her bodily integrity, her illusion of free will – but whatever it is, it is frakking _broken_, and here she is again.

She feels sick as she holds the splint for Leoben while he binds his fingers, and she makes sure that she doesn't touch him at all, keeping her hands on the cool metal and her eyes averted. When he's done, she goes and finds her father's flight jacket and wraps herself up in it, in the comfort of the old leather and faint cigar smell. She lies down, buries her nose in the collar, and goes to sleep.

*~*~*

She rebels the only way she has left: she stops eating. Stops talking, stops fighting, stops everything. Take that, frakking Cylon god and your frakking destiny-obsessed cyborg children. Nobody can make Kara Thrace do anything she doesn't want to.

Leoben still cooks for her, tries to tempt her with sweets and fresh fruits, but he doesn't force-feed her, and he doesn't call any copies of the Simon-toaster to intubate her or anything. Instead he sits with her for hours as she lies in the narrow bed, wrapped in the jacket like armor, curled in toward the wall.

She knows how to do this, knows how to be hungry. She feels a tired triumph as her body starts to consume itself, moving from listlessness into exhaustion as the days drag by. She drinks a little water – she can't help it, though she knows it would be faster without – but that's all. She's going fast anyway – she never had much in the way of fat reserves, and she starts to metabolize her muscles in record time, leaving a thick, sour taste in her mouth and bringing her bones into sharp prominence. When her hair begins to fall out, brittle strands sticking to her pillow, she feels a grim satisfaction. Efficient.

The hunger is always with her, a dull gnawing ache, and it makes her irritable. A lot of the time she just wants to smash Leoben's face in for breathing, or walking around, or _existing._. She doesn't, though, not even when he sits with her and starts in on that God shit again, telling her she's not meant for this, that she has a different destiny. Nobody can make Kara Thrace do anything at all, no matter how much she wants to.

She can still feel the give of broken bone under her hands, still see the resignation, the total lack of surprise on his face. She doesn't trust herself. She takes a little more water and refuses a little more food and feels the hunger burn away more of her flesh. It's the only absolution on offer, and though sleep is just a temporary solace, she slips into it more and more often, waiting for it to become permanent. And still he sits by her, murmuring, telling her that this is not her path, telling her that there is more to life than this suffering, this pain. She'd tell him to shut the frak up, but she's too tired. It doesn't matter.

She wakes once to semi-darkness, and he's still muttering next to her, but he's not talking _to_ her this time. He's got his face in his hands, and she's pretty sure she's dreaming or hallucinating or something, because she hears him say, "If I lose her, so help me, I will not be able to forgive you, I will not…" He gets quieter and she can't understand the next few sentences, mumbled into his palms, but then he runs his hands up into his hair and grips and she hears him whisper "I will turn my face from you for all time if you take her from me now," and she sees the faint shine of moisture on his cheek in the window's moonlight. He goes silent then, and after a little while she fades out, too, back into the blessed oblivion of sleep.

The next time she wakes, he's still sitting beside her, and there's a cramping pain low in her abdomen.

She's bleeding, dark blood in clots and trickles, and if it didn't hurt so gods-damned much, it would feel like relief. More flesh gone, flesh of her flesh. Leoben cleans her up, over and over, head bent over her as if praying, but he doesn't say anything. She'd wonder if she imagined him, bargaining with his god at night, pleading for her, but she can't think of anything but the cramping, wracking pain. Would it hurt more if her body weren't already at the end of its reserves, or less? She closes her eyes and prays to Artemis and Aphrodite, offers up her suffering and her gratitude and her pain. The bleeding goes on for two days.

The second day, she takes a little broth. The day after that, a little hot cereal.

A few more days and she's strong enough to take a bath, and eat some toast and fruit, and she turns away from the rush of relief on Leoben's face as he watches her swallow.

She finds her father's jacket and curls up in it again, staring out the window for days at a time. She heals, physically.

She doesn't speak, though, and she doesn't touch Leoben at all.

Leoben doesn't talk to her about destiny or fate anymore, either.

*~*~*

And then one day Lee shows up at the door.

Just like that. She's staring at him like he's a ghost, her mouth gaping in soundless surprise as he looks around, gun drawn, his skin limned in gold by the late autumn light through the doorway. He sees her and does a double-take – she's got to look awful, she knows, with just a short fuzz of new hair and hollows under her eyes and cheekbones – but all he says is, "Kara. Thank God. Hurry up, come on, we've gotta get you out of here."

"Lee," she says, and her voice is rusty with surprise and disuse. "How…"

That's all she can say before she hears the bathroom door open, and she hears Leoben say, "Adama."

Before she can think, before Lee can do more than swing the muzzle of the gun around to aim, before Leoben can absorb the scene enough to act, she's moving to stand between them. She didn't know she could move that fast anymore. She must be healing up.

"Don't shoot," she says. "Just get me the frak out of here."

"Kara, he's a Cylon. He can stop us. He can tell the others where we are. Move out of the way." Lee gives her that "I am the CAG" look, but she raises her chin and doesn't move.

She can feel Leoben breathing, at her back, feel his warmth, though he's not touching her. "No, he won't," she says. She can feel it, too – he'll let them both go. She doesn't understand how Leoben's frakked-up brain works most of the time, but she's sure of this.

"No," she says again, looking at Lee, and it shocks her how harsh her voice sounds. She steps forward, holding his eyes. "Don't waste your ammo. It's just a copy."

She moves to the door and Lee lowers his gun, unsure, but he follows her out anyway. The sun is bright and she squints into it as she walks toward the waiting transport.

Behind them, she hears Leoben call, "Kara."

And then the crack of Lee's gun, the thump of a heavy fall, and his footsteps hastening to catch up with her.

"Hurry up, Starbuck, let's _go_."

Her eyes burn, and she can taste salt and copper on her tongue, but she holds herself straight and she doesn't look back.


End file.
